Southern

From America’s most beloved superstar and its greatest storyteller - a thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise and on the run, and determined to do whatever it takes to survive....

An exuberant, bighearted novel about two teenaged misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever....

In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm....

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores....

In a tiny Arkansas town, high school football is religion, and there will always be people who will go to any lengths to protect their faith - even murder....

Murphy Shepherd is a man with many secrets. He lives alone on an island, tending the grounds for a church with no parishioners, and he’s dedicated his life to rescuing those in peril. But as he mourns the loss of his mentor and friend, Murph himself may be more lost than he realizes....

Joey Green has returned to Beaufort, South Carolina, with its palmettos and shrimp boats, to look after his ailing father, who is succumbing to dementia, while his overstressed mother takes a break....

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates - a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded jewelry off the side tables of her clients....

Combining heart-wrenching emotion with edge-of-your-seat tension, New York Times best-selling author Charles Martin explores the true power of sacrificial love....

When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain't what you was supposed to be"....

In this number one New York Times best-selling novel of first love and second chances, former high school sweethearts confront the painful truths of their past to build a promising future - together....

Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980: Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness....

Ira and Ruth. Sophia and Luke. Two couples with little in common. Yet their lives converge, yielding extraordinary journeys: beyond despair and death, to the farthest reaches of the human heart....

Emme Wynn has wanted nothing more her whole life than to feel like part of a family. Having grown up on the run with her con artist mother, she’s been shuffled from town to town, drawn into bad situations, and has learned some unsavory habits that she’s tried hard to overcome....

Forty-something widow Jessie Tucker is beloved throughout Lexington, Alabama, for her kind heart and endless generosity. But she feels it's past time she rewarded herself—especially when upstanding Hubert Wiggins tragically loses his wife and son.... 

A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy....

In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent....

An internationally famous photographer, Tucker Mason has traveled the world, capturing things other people don't see. But what Tucker himself can’t see is how to let go of the past and forgive his father....

A first novel as suspenseful and funny as it is moving, How Lucky is the unforgettable story of a fiercely resilient young man grappling with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door....

The year 1920 comes in with a roar in this rousing and suspenseful novel by number-one New York Times best-selling author Sandra Brown. Prohibition is the new law of the land, but murder, mayhem, lust, and greed are already institutions in the Moonshine Capitol of Texas....

The newest installment of the New York Times best-selling Peachtree Bluff series follows three generations of Murphy women as they come together to face a hurricane that threatens their hometown - and the holiday season....

It was called "The Titanic of the South". The luxury steamship sank in 1838 with Savannah's elite on board; through time, their fates were forgotten - until the wreck was found, and now their story is finally being told in this breathtaking novel....

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame....

Harriet Dusfresnes is a child in Mississippi, haunted by the murder of her brother when she was just a baby....

The Kingston Trio’s folk song “Tom Dooley” tells the story of the murder of Laura Foster, a simple country girl involved with returning Confederate soldier Tom Dula....

Valerie Cooper has inherited a majority partnership in the family’s company, New Orleans Fine Antiques. Valerie knows nothing about antiques, but she decides to learn the business and become an active partner. She’s also got her hands full fending off Collette, a woman who wants to sell the huge old house in the Irish Channel neighborhood that Valerie and her husband painstakingly renovated. Valerie isn’t interested in selling—but when her best friend drags her to a costume party, she stumbles over Collette’s body, a jeweled dagger sticking out of her chest.

Stella Maris is the story of a mathematician, twenty years old, admitted to the hospital with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag and one request: She does not want to talk about her brother.

Based on true crime, Jar of Pennies follows the story of how a murderer was brought to justice in small town east Texas. A book as much about east Texas culture deep in the pine forests of the state as it is about a chain of murders and the gathering of evidence, this riveting narrative has elements of both humor and noir as it rockets to its conclusion.

When the Smoke Cleared chronicles how resilience and conviction took hold in one woman to overcome the circumstances of her turbulent childhood and adolescence. A novel that paints a vivid and intimate portrait of an African American Southern family in a small rural town filled with segregation and cultural racism.

When her husband dies unexpectedly, Maggie Royal is struck with sinister visions that foretell danger for her and for her five-year-old daughter. Her mother and grandmother were said to have “the sight,” but it was never like this. With no one alive to turn to, Maggie must move quickly to uncover the meaning of her visions before her candle is snuffed out.

Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother’s house and who is as awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.

On a chilly November morning at the University of Georgia, a fraternity brother steps off a busy crosswalk and is struck dead by an oncoming car. More than a dozen witnesses all agree on two things: the driver looked identical to the victim, and he was smiling. Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene. An Athens native and the daughter of a UGA professor, she knows all its shameful histories, from the skull discovered under the foundations of Baldwin Hall to the hushed-up murder-suicide in Waddel. But in investigating this hit-and-run, she will uncover more chilling secrets.

Award-winning author Fred Chappell has so enraptured us with his rich storytelling, he deserves to be counted among our national treasures. Steeped in Appalachian culture and tradition, this saga of a North Carolina family is a bewitching combination of wit, humor and pathos. Jess Kirkman's mother is dying of congestive heart failure, and he has come home to be at her bedside. Charged with getting family affairs in order, he faces the daunting task of sorting out the secret workshop that his father left behind when he died 10 years ago. 

1980, Pass Christian, Mississippi: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wetsuit and plunges from the boat deck into darkness. His divelight illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flightbag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how?

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate. Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact.

Jody Luther is a 15 year-old White girl battling insanity at home and hate-filled 1970 Jackson, Mississippi, leading to the Jackson State Massacre. Jody has landed in Jackson with her alcoholic mother and younger sister, Willie. The book not only deals with racial issues, but police-forced integration leading up to the murder of two young black students.

Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend ever since a night forty years ago stole Trudy’s voice and cemented Violet’s role as Trudy’s fierce and loyal protector. Now, Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking via notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors the bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of her one great love she gave up in order to keep her sister safe.

In the wake of a very public—and very scandalous—breakup, country music star Lydia St. Peter finds herself in need of a place of refuge. She doesn’t know why she thinks she’ll find it with the family she never knew she had in River Falls, Tennessee, but at least the small town will offer her the privacy she so desperately craves. When single dad Liam returns to his hometown of River Falls, it’s with the intention of taking care of his mother and protecting his daughter. What he doesn’t see coming is the connection with the new tenant in his mother’s carriage house.

Charlotte Van Cleave’s hissy-fit reaction to her husband’s infidelity sours her world like a pot of boiled chitlins. She’s left with no husband, no job, and no home—well, besides the dilapidated farmhouse inherited from her nana. But Charlie learned early that Southern girls dig deep when things go sideways. She’d climbed out of the mire when her missionary parents were killed in Congo, endured two late-term miscarriages, and survived the death of her nana and papaw. Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash, Charlie follows a new path with her interior design skills.

It’s 1962, and Violet Romero, a young woman searching for peace after a horrible tragedy, finds herself in an unexpected place—managing funerals at Berwick, an antebellum mansion-turned-mortuary in Lexington, Kentucky. Her employer, Henry Pendleton, a botany-obsessed mortician, seems harmless, but Violet believes that he is hiding something. Following her instincts, Violet discovers a hidden room in Berwick that offers a glimpse into the mansion’s dark past. Violet soon understands that a reckoning is coming to Henry’s life, and she is caught in the rising tide of revenge.